


Back, Before The World Changed

by Rabbit (Majorminor2242)



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - How to Train Your Dragon, Dragons, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III Needs a Hug, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III and Dragons, Protective Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, Protective Toothless (How to Train Your Dragon), Teen Hiccup Horrendous Haddock lll, Third Movie Spoilers, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:14:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26665756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Majorminor2242/pseuds/Rabbit
Summary: The only three Night Lights in the hidden world are the descendants of the legendary Night Fury, Toothless, and the mythical Light Fury, Mistwing. Hardly anything is known about them, as they are an entirely new species of dragon.That's why they didn't know themselves, quite why what happened, happened. All they DO know, is that right now, somehow, they're somewhere *or someWHEN* they shouldn't be, and what's before them is terrifyingly unfamiliar in the most recognisable way.
Relationships: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Night Light Dragons, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III & Toothless, Night Light Dragons & Toothless (How to Train Your Dragon)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	1. Three Siblings

**AN: This story was inspired entirely by this image:  
**<https://i.pinimg.com/originals/06/b0/55/06b05526194b60691a242f6966cfebe3.jpg> -the three Night Light dragons grown up.

From left to right:

-Pouncer (male)  
-Ruffrunner (male)  
-Dart (female)

For this story, I am changing their names a little, since 'Pouncer', 'Ruffrunner' and 'Dart' are... well, Dart is good I guess, but the other two? Not just that, but Dart is somehow the female whilst Pouncer is male -yet everyone usually gets that wrong anyway by assuming Pouncer is female from the looks.

It's all dumb and confusing.

Therefor I am changing:

-Pouncer's name (the white one) to 'Moonchaser' and is **FEMALE** , not male.  
-Ruffrunner is still male, but going to be called 'Shadow' -simple and overused, yes I know, but unless I can come up with something better this is it.  
-Dart is keeping their name, but is **MALE** , not female.

In previous stories, I already have a 'dragon' name for Toothless, but you'll have to wait and see for when that comes. ;3

* * *

"Bet you can't catch me!"

"Hey-! You asked for it! Get back here!"

Three Night Lights soared through the sky, landscape rolling beneath them like a blurred canvas of splattered paint colours, tumulting through the billowing clouds and barrelling around each other. The two who were most at it, were Dart and Moonchaser, who were the ones who had spoken respectively. Shadow, meanwhile, stayed back and observed with a small smile, enjoying the tranquility of flying despite his younger siblings' antics.

Just as the three were making their way back to the Hidden World, the secret, mystical, cavernous hideout of the many dragons that once roamed the overworld a few decades ago, something echoed within the air.

_Fwip-fwip-_

Ears perking up over the other twos' squabbling, Shadow narrowed his eyes in acute alertness. _"What was that...?"_ His head spun around around, wary of whatever the noise he had just heard had been/come from and desperate to find relief in a false alarm, but the fact that he could see nothing was only more worrying. "You two, _shut up right now!"_

_Fwip-fwip-fwip-fwip-_

"Do you hear that?"

"What was that?" Dart asked, finally halting his harassment of his sister and focussing.

Just then, out of nowhere, a mass of rope and rock went careening past Moonchaser's face, with her only dodging it by centimetres- but still receiving a scratch on the face.

"GET ABOVE THE CLOUDS!" Shadow yelled to the other two, and they spent no time disobeying their older brother's orders unlike usual. They could tell that this time, it was serious.

Another object went ' _fwip-ing_ ' through the sky. Then another, and another. Soon enough these things were being launched at them without hardly any space between, and all they could do was flail desperately in the sky, doing all they could to dodge the attacks in narrow manoeuvres and aerial acrobatics.

But it was a game of chance, and eventually, a moment came when one couldn't be dodged without flying into another, and the one of them was caught. The bindings wrapped themselves around their legs, wings and fins, and small barbs in the rope hooked in their leathery hide painfully as the rocks weighed them down, pulling them harshly under the affect of Earth's gravity.

"DART!" Moonchaser screamed, pausing mid-flight to aim a well-placed plasma blast at her brother's bindings to free him. This only served to turn the dragon invisible from the sparkling, special properties in their scales and plasma-blasts (a feature the three had gained from their mother, a Light Fury). Parts of the ropes were singed, however still wrapped evidently wrapped around him.

That single second of immobility was all it took for Moonchaser to come plummeting down next, just as locked tightly as Dart was.

All that was left was Shadow, who cursed under his breath as he desperately dove through the clouds in a dangerous gamble. He was facing the flying trap-thingies head-on now, accelerating towards them which made them harder to dodge in time, however he had to make it to his siblings before they hit the ground. A fall from this height, and it wouldn't matter _how_ tough you scales were;

_you were pancake-dragon._

A whistle picked up in the air, slowly turning into a shrill screech that cracked the skies themselves; his eyes blurred at the speeds he was descending at, and instinctually, his wings closed and narrowed, which was what was producing the sound. He'd never flown at these speeds before, but something about it felt...

It felt _right._ Like he should be blowing something up, or firing at something...

_Catapults._ His mind supplied a word he'd never heard before. _I should be firing at catapults..._

Abruptly, something clipped his side, sending him reeling from his momentary stupor, Shadow recognised the two shapes he was about to blast as his brother and sister, and the fire in his mouth diminished to a non-lethal blast, but stronger that what Moon had produced when trying to free Dart. He couldn't afford to get distracted! Right now, he has to save his family!

The two dragons realised they were heading towards the ground far too fast to recover, but as the blasts connected, burning the ropes that encased them, something unfathomable happened. They thought they were about to die, when suddenly the entire area in a dozen metre radius of the blasts expanded, exploding in a shockwave of solidified air that looked like a glistening bubble, before suddenly, it shrunk back in on itself with a pull in the air, and they disappeared, leaving no trace of them ever existing in the sky.

Shadow's eyes widened in horror at seeing the disappearance of his siblings, but he could do nothing to react as he flew directly towards the outskirts of the shockwave of air, which sent him spiralling out of control and directly towards an upcoming plateau. In desperation in his speed, he fired one final blast in front of him, which he flew into (like when going invisible) praying that the same would happen and that he would be following wherever his siblings had gone (and hoping he hadn't outright killed them with the strange blast), and like that, he too disappeared in a flash of glittery light, only mere inches away from hitting rock.

* * *

Dart felt his mouth fill with soil as a trench as wide as him was left permanently imprinted on the earth, chin bumping on every rock and tree root until he came to a gradual stop.

It was only when he heard a scrape/thumb beside him, that his senses refocussed as best they could -which wasn't much if hitting the ground at those speeds was any clue. His eyes came to rest on a white form he recognised as his sister.

"H-hey. You *cough* still alive?"

"Ughhhh... Barely..."

"Darn..." he managed to wheeze a short, hacked-out laugh, earning a pathetically weak tail-slap to the head for his jest.

"I could say the same to you, flame brain." he could hear Moonchaser audibly pout in her voice.

"...Hey, you think it's alright if I just...-"

 _*-snoooooore-*_ He was out before he could finish, and Moonchaser would have face-finned (a dragon's version of facepalm but with tailfins- something the three had learned off their father's strange, human-ish mannerisms he had picked up.

Unable to resist the temptations of rest any longer in her current condition despite her slight worry of being ambushed, she collapsed on her chin, wings dropping beside her as she accepted the embrace of sleep beside her brother. The grass beneath felt strange, as it wasn't often they ever slept out in the open like this and not in their home, the Hidden World surrounded by glow-shrooms and enormous rock columns, but in too many ways, it actually felt...

_Right_.

Peaceful. Like the nature around them shouldn't worry them, but relax them into a better slumber.

* * *

Coming out of the sphere, Shadow barrelled into the ice-cold water below, lungs gasping in abrupt shock, causing the thin air he still had to leave his body. As he choked on the fluid that was quickly water-logging him, he tried his best to flail towards the light piercing the surface from above, but nothing he did could stop him from drowning now. His wings were already stuck in the water and he had no momentum to carry him out.

He was a dead dragon.

It was only in the faintest reach of his mind, that he sensed a presence loom over him, overcasting his last sight in shadow as a claw grabbed onto him.

_"The queen will certainly be interested in this..."_


	2. Hiccup the Disastrous

Hiccup had never been...

Well, there's many adjectives that could fit that sentence, but for now let's sum it up as... ' _Viking-ly'._

He was small and thin, the lanky kind which stuck out like anorexia among the burly meatheads of Berk -which he wasn't, but that's the point. He was an early child born in the dead of winter, and whilst young contracted several near-fatal illnesses that later stunted his growth.

"Y'u can't hold an axe, y'u can't weild a hammer, you can't even throw one a' these!" Gobber held up a bola, several rock balls attacked to thick ropes which were used for binding dragons mid-air to ground them.

You see, Hiccup was the assistant blacksmith at the forge, and Gobber was pretty much the only person in the entire village that accepted his 'weird' habits and personality and actually made him feel better by being around. He and Gobber had a far better relationship than Hiccup had with his dad, or _any_ of the others in Berk, for that matter. None of the teens his age liked him, and he wasn't unused to dealing with his cousin Snotlout Jorgenson picking on him, along with the twins Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thornston. Astrid Hofferson would just ignore his very existence like one would regard a fly or a beetle, and Fishlegs practically betrayed their friendship when they were younger to hang out with the 'cool kids'.

"I know, I know. That's why I have _this_ to throw it for me..." Hiccup motioned towards his latest contraption underneath a tarp. Another thing of somewhat important note, is that they are currently experiencing a dragon raid in early morning darkness- but that's a relatively common occurrence.

At the alarming sound of a _'new invention',_ Gobber was _not_ as enthusiastic as he was... "Oh no- don' you even think ab'ut-" before he could even finish, the 'bad omen that _is_ Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the III' kicked in, and the device activated, launching a bola at a very unlucky Viking that was waiting outside the stall window for their weapon to be sharpened and promptly knocking them out.

"It... just needs a few minor calibrations..." Hiccup muttered weakly with an unconvincing smile as Gobber shook his head and huffed.

"The answer's _**'** **no'**_ _._ Y'u aren't goin' out there." and with that, he dumped half a dozen weapons into the boy's reluctant hands. "Swords. Sharpen. Now."

Knowing defeat, Hiccup retreated to the wheel-grinder, mind roaming to the thought of killing a Night Fury and finally making his whole village- but especially his father, proud.

_'Tonight's the night. I can feel it. The moment Gobber leaves to help fight, I'll down that dragon!'_

* * *

A nasally, grating voice carried through the silence, drilling into the man's head endlessly. _"--we need to get a search party out there before it-"_

 **"-STOP."** Stoick took one deep breath, before pinching the bridge of his nose and releasing a guttural sigh. "Just... _stop."_

_Why couldn't his boy be like the others...? Why did he keep getting these catastrophic messes that HE had to clean up?_

"...Get back to the house. _And make sure 'e gets there."_ he glared at Gobber, who cuffed the boy in front of him for getting into trouble, before ushering him towards the chief's house on top of the hill overlooking both Berk and the forest.

"Hey, nice job loser. _You almost caught one!"_ Snotlout mocked sarcastically with the twins snorting beside him. Fishlegs avoided his gaze, and Astrid showed no notice that he was there once again.

"Thanks, _I was actually trying so..."_ he muttered the last part under his breath, but as he was nudged past, Gobber smacked the bully upside the head with an unimpressed scowl.

"F'r once in 'ur life, be quiet lad."

The walk back up to the house was one of immense shame. "He never listens, I really did hit one!"

_"Sure ya did."_

"-And when he does, it's with this disappointed scowl -like someone skimped out on the meat in his sandwich..." he puffed out his chest and lowered his voice with a thick accent. " 'scuse me, barmaid! I'm afraid ye brought me the wrong offspring! I ordered a beefy boy, with extra guts and glory on the side! This here, _this is a talkin' fishbone!"_ he said elaborately with detest.

"Oh come now lad, it ain't _that_ bad-"

"All I want is to make someone, _anyone_ proud of me. Is that so much to ask?" Hiccup asked sarcastically, before slamming the door to his front house with a bang, leaving the man standing there with a pensive, pained frown upon his face, which was quickly masked by a natural expression.

_'Oh, Stoick... What you dunnae know...."_

What he didn't notice, as he trekked back down the main path, was that Hiccup had already slipped out the back door to the house and into the woods behind, _determined to find that dragon..._

* * *

When Artenyx awoke, the first thing he felt was a pressure on his paw. He shook it off with a grunt, willing to go back to sleep, however that wasn't possible when the voice of a human rang out.

"I'm gonna kill you dragon... I'm gonna rip out your heart and take it to my father... I'm a viking! I-I'm a _viking_!" it sounded like he was trying to convince himself of this, but as Artenyx cracked open his eye to take one final glance at his destined killer, he felt shame upon seeing that it was a mere hatchling-child.

_The mighty, illusive Níodyr, downed by a stick with legs."_ he thought with bitter sarcasm evaluating the boy, as their eyes locked onto his, noticing they were now open, and the two held their stares for the longest time.

"I-It's alive..." he seemed to mutter, to which Artenyx wanted to roll his eyes to, before the knife raised shakily above his neck. He dropped to the floor, closing his eyes, already accepting death and not bothering with futile resistance with a beaten up, battered body that was still bound like he was, but after several drawn out seconds of silence, the words _"I did this..."_ carried with the strength of a light breeze, and something thumped to the dirt ground.

Realising that the boy didn't seem to want to kill him, he cracked open an eye once more, and stared at the pitiful-expression the boy displayed.

"I'm too weak to even kill the biggest threat in all of Viking history... Guess the village is right, _what a disappointment..."_ he muttered shallowly, and something wet glistened beneath his eyes.

Artenyx found himself feeling somewhat... _guilty..._ for seeing this side of the human child. It felt shameful to observe a creature, this human, who seemed so broken and lonely that it did not wish to kill mindlessly, but was simply stuck between the crossfire of a centuries-old feudal war between his kind and their kind.

He picked up the metal-claw (knife) off the ground and held it loosely between his fingers, before clipping a rope that was pulling his right wing crooked. The heavy rock weight dropped to the ground, allowing the dragon to stretch the wing freely once again -thankfully it wasn't broken- and before anything else, another rope began to snap.

"If you kill me, you kill me. At this point it doesn't even matter to me. It's not like _anyone would even care_ _if I died_ _anyway_." the boy muttered as the final rope fell loose around his paws.

But against instinct, Artenyx did not pounce. He did not claw out the human's throat, nor rip off their arm with serated teeth for revenge for the pain he's in...

He looked down at the boy who sat on his knees, face overcast, and felt _pity._ Even if the boy _asked_ him to kill him, he wouldn't do it at this point. It just seemed so...

...

Deciding to leave the human be, he left without another word, however when attempting to take to the skies, his left fin burned in agony and he was sent spiralling back down, crashing into the ground and forming a crater.

Unluckily, when Artenyx eventually made sense of where he had landed, he found he had fallen into some large, naturally formed cove, and for the rest of that night and many days after he tried to fly out and escape the natural prison, inevitably however, he found that he simply couldn't.

_'Well, at least I'm free of that rotten Queen's control -so long as they don't find me before I die here.'_ he thought to himself bitterly.

 _'If I knew this would happen only minutes later, I would have killed that squish..."_ he grunted regarding the human who had doomed him by mutilating his tail.


End file.
